It is a truism that humans are social animals. Thus, it is no surprise that we understand the world, each other, and ourselves in terms of social kinds such as money and marriage, war and women, capitalists and cartels, races, recessions, and refugees. Social kinds condition our expectations, inform our preferences, and guide our behavior. Despite the prevalence and importance of social kinds, philosophy has historically devoted relatively little attention to them. With few exceptions, philosophers have given pride of place (...) to the kinds studied by the natural sciences, especially physics. However, philosophical interest in social kinds is growing in recent years. I critically examine answers to a cluster of related questions concerning the metaphysics of social kinds. Are social kinds natural kinds? Do social kinds have essences? Are social kinds mind dependent? Are social kinds real? (shrink)

This investigation addresses the hypothesis that negative affect is associated with decreased ability to shift attention to a new focus. Thirty-nine participants completed a covert attentional orienting task and then viewed a distressing film clip. Mood was measured by self-report at the beginning and end of the session. Correlations between attentional orienting performance and self-reported mood indicated that participants with greater response time costs on invalidly cued trials reported more negative affect in response to the film. These results support the (...) hypothesis that negative affect is associated with a slowness to disengage attention. (shrink)

In this book, Andreas Serafim sets out to investigate the use of religious discourse, by which he means any reference to religious ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in public speaking contexts in classical Athens. Like Gunther Martin (Divine Talk: Religious Argumentation in Demosthenes, 2009), Serafim examines religion primarily as a tool for persuasion, but he differentiates himself from Martin’s book by offering a more comprehensive study: he aims to take into account all extant speeches from t...

The deceased's prior consent to posthumous reproduction is a common requirement in many common law jurisdictions. This paper critically evaluates four arguments advanced to justify the presumption against consent. It is argued that, in situations where death is caused by sudden trauma, not only is there inadequate justification for the presumption against consent, but there are good reasons to reverse the presumption. The article concludes that the precondition of prior consent may be inappropriate in these situations.

As a culture, we have a tendency to measure motherhood in terms of a set of signal moments that have become the focus of special social attention and anxiety; we interpret these as emblematic summations of women's mothering abilities. Women's performances during these moments can seem to exhaust the story of mothering, and mothers often internalize these measures and evaluate their own mothering in terms of them. "Good" mothers are those who pass a series of tests—they bond properly during their (...) routine ultrasound screening, they do not let a sip of alcohol cross their lips during pregnancy, they give birth vaginally without pain medication, they do not offer their child an artificial nipple during the first six months, they feed their children maximally nutritious meals with every bite, and so on. This reductive understanding of mothering has had counterproductive effects upon health care practice and policy, encouraging measures that penalize mothers who do not live up to cultural norms during signal moments, while failing to promote extended narratives of healthy mothering. (shrink)

Realist ideology critique (RIC) is a strand of political realism recently developed in response to concerns that realism is biased toward the status quo. RIC aims to debunk an individual's belief that a social institution is legitimate by revealing that the belief is caused by that very same institution. Despite its growing prominence, RIC has received little critical attention. In this article, I buck this trend. First, I improve on contemporary accounts of RIC by clarifying its status and the role (...) of motivated reasoning. Second, I show that realist ideology critics face a dilemma: either their account makes deeply implausible epistemological assumptions, or they temper its epistemology at the expense of rendering it toothless. I argue for each horn in turn before revealing the dilemma to be a false one by making a novel distinction between varying strengths of RIC based on their underlying epistemological assumptions. I propose Moder-ate RIC as a solution: upon discovering that one reason for your belief that a social institution is legitimate is likely malignantly epistemically circular, the belief should undergo further epistemic testing. I respond to three potential objections and suggest that Moderate RIC would make a fruitful addition to political theorists' methodological toolkit. (shrink)

Acknowledgements -- Introduction: transformation, potential, futures -- Screening affect : images, representational thinking and the actualization of the virtual -- Bringing the image to life : interactive mirrors and intensive experience -- Becoming different : makeover television, proximity and immediacy -- Immanent measure : interaction, attractors and the multiple temporalities of online dieting -- Pre-empting the future : obesity, prediction and change4life -- Conclusion : transforming images : sociology, the future and the virtual -- Bibliography -- Index.

Mothers serve as an important layer of the health-care system, with special responsi-bilities to care for the health of families and nations. In our social discourse, we tend to treat maternal “choices” as though they were morally and causally Self-contained units of influence with primary control over children's health. In this essay, I use infant feeding as a lens for examining the ethical contours of mothers’ caretaking practices and responsibilities, as they are situated within cultural meanings and institutional pressures. I (...) give a close critical reading of the content and strategy of the new breastfeeding advocacy campaign sponsored by the United States Department of Health and Human Services. I argue that the campaign is unlikely to substantially increase breastfeeding rates, unresponsive and even hostile to many women's actual concerns about breastfeeding, and well positioned to produce shame and compromise agency among the women it targets. (shrink)

Translational science is a 21st century mission. Government officials and industry leaders are making huge investments in an attempt to transform more basic science discoveries into therapeutic applications. Scientists and policymakers express great excitement about the medical advances that could come with the current bench-to-bedside campaign.A key step in translational science is the move from animal and other preclinical studies to initial human testing. Researchers ability to predict human effects is limited, and first-in-human tests present significant uncertainty. Participants in this (...) form of research face risks and can experience serious, even lethal, harm. Well-known incidents involving Jolee Mohr and Jesse Gelsinger, as well as subjects in the 2006 study of the investigational agent TGN1412, show the dangers that can arise in early human research.The bench-to-bedside campaign will need many volunteers to participate in early human testing. Investigators and regulators must not allow the policy enthusiasm for translational science to overshadow the commitment to protect human subjects. Participants in exploratory research are diverse and as a group lack characteristics usually associated with vulnerable populations, such as impaired decisional ability or economic or educational disadvantage. (shrink)

Debates about indoctrination raise fundamental questions about the ethics of teaching. This paper presents a philosophical analysis of indoctrination, including 1) an account of what indoctrination is and why it is harmful, and 2) a framework for understanding the responsibilities of teachers and other educational actors to avoid its negative outcomes. I respond to prominent outcomes-based accounts of indoctrination, which I argue share two limiting features—a narrow focus on the threat indoctrination poses to knowledge and on the dyadic relationship between (...) indoctrinator and indoctrinated person. I propose a system-based account of indoctrination in which actors with authority contribute to the production or reinforcement of closed-mindedness, which threatens both knowledge and understanding. By taking a system-based approach, my account is better equipped to identify the implications of indoctrination for educational policy and practice. (shrink)

Under current U.S. law, physicians may prescribe drugs and devices in situations not covered on the label approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Those supporting this system say that requiring FDA approval for off-label uses would unnecessarily impede the delivery of benefits to patients. Patients do benefit from off-label prescribing that is supported by sound scientific and medical evidence. In the absence of such evidence, however, off-label prescribing can expose patients to risky and ineffective treatments. The medical community and (...) federal authorities should more actively promote patients' interests in receiving beneficial off-label treatments. To exercise responsible self-regulation, members of the medical community must determine whether available evidence justifies specific off-label uses and must promote information-gathering when the evidence is inadequate. Physicians should also discuss with patients the uncertainties accompanying off-label uses. Federal authorities should more closely monitor the effects of off-label prescribing and adopt other measures to reduce harm and enhance benefits produced by off-label prescribing. (shrink)

Research subjects do not always conform to research requirements. When their personal interests conflict with the demands of participation, some subjects surreptitiously break the rules. These subjects are subversive — they undermine the research endeavor. In rejecting the restrictions research imposes, subversive subjects diminish the value of research results. From one vantage point, subversive subjects engage in unethical behavior. They create risks to themselves and others; they also disregard ethical responsibilities to adhere to research agreements and tell the truth. At (...) the same time, subversive subjects expose ethical problems in the design and conduct of clinical trials. Features of the research environment create fertile ground for subject subversion. Intensified policing and guidance are two common strategies for reducing subject subversion, but collaborative reforms are more consistent with the partnership model of clinical research. (shrink)

This volume explores the relationship between Kant's aesthetic theory and his critical epistemology as articulated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of the Power of Judgment. The essays, written specially for this volume, explore core elements of Kant's epistemology, such as his notions of discursive understanding, experience, and objective judgment. They also demonstrate a rich grasp of Kant's critical epistemology that enables a deeper understanding of his aesthetics. Collectively, the essays reveal that Kant's critical project, and the (...) dialectics of aesthetics and cognition within it, is still relevant to contemporary debates in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and the nature of experience and objectivity. The book also yields important lessons about the ineliminable, yet problematic place of imagination, sensibility and aesthetic experience in perception and cognition. (shrink)

The biomedical literature and popular media are full of upbeat reports about the health benefits we can expect from medical innovations using nanotechnology. Some particularly enthusiastic reports portray nanotechnology as one of the innovations that will lead to a significantly extended human life span. Extreme enthusiasts predict that nanotechnology “will ultimately enable us to redesign and rebuild, molecule by molecule, our bodies and brains….”Nanomaterials have special characteristics that could contribute to improved patient care. But the same characteristics that make nanotechnology (...) promising also present risks to humans exposed to nanomaterials. A failure to appreciate these risks could jeopardize the research effort. As others have pointed out, if nanomedical interventions produce unexpected human harm, a loss of public and government support for nanomedicine is likely to follow.Like other forms of medical innovation, novel nanomedical interventions require human testing to evaluate their safety and effectiveness. (shrink)

The year 2014 brought a new development in the bioethics “laboratory of the states.” Five states adopted “right to try” laws intended to promote terminally ill patients' access to investigational drugs. Many more state legislatures are now considering such laws. The campaign for right to try laws is the latest move in an ongoing effort to give seriously ill patients access to drugs whose safety and effectiveness remain largely unknown. Although scientists and policy‐makers oppose the right to try approach, it (...) has proven quite popular among state legislators and the public. (shrink)

Adoption of technology in agriculture can significantly reorganize production and relationships amongst humans, animals, technology, and the natural environment. However, the adoption of agricultural technology is not homogenous, and diversity in integration leads to a diversity of outcomes and impacts. In this study, we examine the adoption of automated milking systems in small and midsize dairy farms in the US Midwest, the Netherlands, and Denmark. In contrast to technological determinism, we find significant variation amongst adopters in the implementation of AMS (...) and corresponding variation in outcomes. Adopters have significant discretion in determining the use of AMS, which leads to a diversity of possible outcomes for family and non-family labor, human–cow relationships, animal welfare, the environment, and financial resiliency. Adoption and implementation are shaped by both structural factors, such as debt load and labor market variation, and by farmers’ individual personality traits and values, such as a willingness to release control to technology. Rather than uniform adoption and impacts of technology, we highlight the importance of context, the co-constitution of technology and users, and the diversity of technology adoption and its associated impacts. (shrink)

The case studies compiled in _Another Way: Decentralization, Democratization and the Global Politics of Community-Based Schooling_ offer a comparative look at how the global politics of educational decentralization have influenced the democratic aspirations of diverse community-based schooling initiatives in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

In this Introduction to a special section on ‘Visualizing Surfaces, Surfacing Vision’, the authors argue that to conceive vision in the contemporary world it is necessary to examine its embedding within, expression via and organization on the surface. First, they review recent social and cultural theories to demonstrate how and why an attention to surfaces is salient today. Second, they consider how vision may be understood in terms of surfaces, discussing the emergence of the term ‘surface’, and its transhistorical relationship (...) with vision. Third, they introduce the contributions to the special section, which cover written articles and artworks. They make connections between them, including their exploration of reflexivity and recursion, observation, objectivity and agency, ontology and epistemology, relationality, process, and two- and three-dimensionality. Fourth, the authors consider some implications of an understanding of visualizing surfaces/surfacing vision. (shrink)

This essay explores the familiar German ideology according to which a revolution in thought would, in varying proportions, precede, succeed, accommodate, and generally upstage a political revolution whose defining feature was increasingly thought to be its founding violence: the slide from 1789 to 1793. Germany thus sets out to quarantine the political threat of revolution while siphoning off and absorbing the revolution’s intensity and energy for thinking as such. The essay holds that this structure corresponds to the psychoanalytic logic of (...) trauma: the dissolution of the event into a missed event, and the hypertrophic investment in the trivial, the non-event, the negligible remainder. (shrink)

An argument that what is usually dismissed as the “mystical shell” of Hegel's thought—the concept of absolute knowledge—is actually its most “rational kernel.” This book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel's system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel's radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel's thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to “absolute knowing.” Comay and Ruda invert this (...) deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. Reading Hegel without presupposition, without eliminating anything in advance or making any decision about what is essential and what is inessential, what is living and what is dead, they explore his presentation of the absolute to the letter. The Dash is organized around a pair of seemingly innocuous details. Hegel punctuates strangely. He ends the Phenomenology of Spirit with a dash, and he begins the Science of Logic with a dash. This distinctive punctuation reveals an ambiguity at the heart of absolute knowing. The dash combines hesitation and acceleration. Its orientation is simultaneously retrospective and prospective. It both holds back and propels. It severs and connects. It demurs and insists. It interrupts and prolongs. It generates nonsequiturs and produces explanations. It leads in all directions: continuation, deviation, meaningless termination. This challenges every cliché about the Hegelian dialectic as a machine of uninterrupted teleological progress. The dialectical movement is, rather, structured by intermittency, interruption, hesitation, blockage, abruption, and random, unpredictable change—a rhythm that displays all the vicissitudes of the Freudian drive. (shrink)

Mr. C is a twenty‐two‐year‐old who was flown to a level‐1 trauma center after diving headfirst into shallow water. Prior to this accident, he was in excellent health. At the scene, he had been conscious but was paralyzed and had no sensation below his neck. The emergency medical services team immobilized Mr. C's neck with a cervical collar and intubated him for airway protection before transport. As Mr. C's medical care proceeds, he expresses a desire for extubation, although it was (...) not clear that he had the capacity to make this (or any other) decision. It also was unclear whether this desire reflected his authentic wishes to be allowed to die or stemmed from feelings of discomfort and agitation. Over a period of several days, Mr. C's sedation was lightened, and the psychiatry service conducted a formal decision‐making capacity assessment. Mr. C continues to express a desire to withdraw life‐sustaining medical treatment. However, the psychiatry service is concerned that Mr. C seems to lack adequate insight into what it would mean to die.What does it mean to respect Mr. C's autonomy? (shrink)

We can safely infer that a proposition is possible if p is the case. But, I argue, this inference from the actual to the possible is merely explicative in nature, though we employ it at times as if it were ampliative. To make this inference ampliative, we need to include an inference to the best explanation. Specifically, we can draw a substantive conclusion as to whether p is possible from the fact that p is the case, if via our best (...) explanation we can explain how p could occur again in the complete and coherent set of propositions that describes the actual world. (shrink)

While the definitions employed by different governmental agencies and scientific societies differ somewhat, the term “nanotechnology” is generally understood to refer to the manufacturing, characterization, and use of man-made devices with dimensions on the order of 1-100 nanometers. Devices that comprise a fundamental functional element that is nanotechnological are also frequently comprised within nanotechnology, as are manufactured objects with dimensions less than one micrometer. The differences in definition lead to occasional paradoxes, such as the fact that the most widely used (...) nanodrug is labeled a “nanopharmaceutical” by governments of European countries, Canada, and Australia, but it is not a nanotechnology for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It is also common in scientific domains to restrict the term “nanotechnology” to objects that possess special, “emerging” properties that only arise because of their nanoscale dimension. (shrink)

In this issue, Paul Menzel and M. Colette Chandler‐Cramer propose a novel advance directive. Besides giving competent people the opportunity to refuse future life‐prolonging medical interventions, they say, advance directives should give people the opportunity to refuse ordinary food and water if they later experience severe dementia.This proposal is both appealing and unsettling. It is appealing because it offers some relief to people seeking to avoid the prolonged decline and extreme incapacity they have witnessed in relatives and friends with advanced (...) dementia. But does it sufficiently protect patients? Menzel and Chandler‐Cramer want to empower competent persons to impose potential discomfort and distress on a later self who cannot understand the reasons for that choice. In this situation, the price of respecting autonomy is paid by a frail incapacitated patient who has no idea why food and water are no longer offered to her. (shrink)

Should monkeys be used in painful and often deadly infectious disease research that may save many human lives? This is the challenging question that Anne Barnhill, Steven Joffe, and Franklin G. Miller take on in their carefully argued and compelling article “The Ethics of Infection Challenges in Primates.” The authors offer a nuanced and even-handed position that takes philosophical worries about nonhuman primate moral status seriously and still appreciates the very real value of such research for human welfare. Overall, they (...) argue for an extension and revision of the recommendations regarding chimpanzee research offered by the Institute of Medicine in 2011; the practical upshot of their argument would allow for infection challenge research for promising interventions for Ebola and Marburg virus diseases but not for smallpox or the common cold. The IOM recommendations regarding chimpanzee research put in motion an exceptionalist policy for this great ape population. Barnhill and colleagues’ proposal would enlarge the scope of that exceptionalism to embrace NHPs other than great apes. But is such exceptionalism warranted? It is not obvious to me either that the more sophisticated capacities of a species as a whole give it greater ethical protections or that less intellectually or socially sophisticated animals ought to therefore receive less protection when it comes to painful experimental interventions. (shrink)

The concept of the exception has heavily shaped modern political theory. In modernity, Kierkegaard was one of the first philosophers to propound the exception as a facilitator of metaphysical transcendence. Merging Kierkegaard’s metaphysical exception with early modern political theorist Jean Bodin’s theory of sovereignty, Carl Schmitt introduced sovereignty to metaphysics. He thereby made an early modern concept usable in a post-metaphysical world. This essay carries Schmitt’s appropriation one step further. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s replacement of transcendental metaphysics with contingent creaturehood, (...) it reintroduces the anti-foundationalist concept of repetition that was implicit in Kierkegaard’s paradigm but which was not made lucid until Benjamin crafted from the Schmittian exception a vision of political life grounded in creaturely existence. -/- . (shrink)

Much of the public debate over laboratory animal use has focused on either the scientist's demand for absolute freedom of inquiry, or the abolitionist's demand for an end to animal use in science. Yet many recent proposals for reform seek instead to balance the interests of laboratory animals in avoiding harm against the interests of research beneficiaries in continued animal use. This essay is an analysis of the intermediate reform positions and their underlying ethical principles. Keywords: animal research, animal experimentation, (...) ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Recent events have revived questions about the circumstances that ought to trigger therapists' duty to warn or protect. There is extensive interstate variation in duty to warn or protect statutes enacted and rulings made in the wake of the California Tarasoff ruling. These duties may be codified in legislative statutes, established in common law through court rulings, or remain unspecified. Furthermore, the duty to warn or protect is not only variable between states but also has been dynamic across time. In (...) this article, we review the implications of this variability and dynamism, focusing on three sets of questions: first, what legal and ethics-related challenges do therapists in each of the three broad categories of states (states that mandate therapists to warn or protect, states that permit therapists to breach confidentiality for warnings but have no mandate, and states that give no guidance) face in handling threats of violence? Second, what training do therapists and other professionals involved in handling violent threats receive, and is this training adequate for the task that these professionals are charged with? Third, how have recent court cases changed the scope of the duty? We conclude by pointing to gaps in the empirical and conceptual scholarship surrounding the duty to warn or protect. (shrink)

During the oppressive reign of Louis XIV, Gabrielle Suchon was the most forceful female voice in France, advocating women’s freedom and self-determination, access to knowledge, and assertion of authority. This volume collects Suchon’s writing from two works—_Treatise on Ethics and Politics_ and _On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen; or, Life without Commitments _—and demonstrates her to be an original philosophical and moral thinker and writer. Suchon argues that both women and men have inherently similar intellectual, corporeal, and spiritual capacities, which (...) entitle them equally to essentially human prerogatives, and she displays her breadth of knowledge as she harnesses evidence from biblical, classical, patristic, and contemporary secular sources to bolster her claim. Forgotten over the centuries, these writings have been gaining increasing attention from feminist historians, students of philosophy, and scholars of seventeenth-century French literature and culture. This translation, from Domna C. Stanton and Rebecca M. Wilkin, marks the first time these works will appear in English. (shrink)